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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27926131">And burn for us right through the fall</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft'>SecondStarOnTheLeft</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Christmas 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Critical Role (Web Series)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Minor canon divergence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 20:48:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,355</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27926131</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Percy is born with a soulbond, and dies without one.</p>
<p>The next time he dies, he doesn't do it alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Christmas 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2044885</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>104</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>And burn for us right through the fall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/gifts">EssayOfThoughts</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Title from <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYubEn15eH4">Fall</a></em> by Lisa Hannigan. </p>
<p>I started binging CR like... last month? So this is a first tentative dip in the pool.</p>
<p>Happy Christmas, Aich! One down, a few to go :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Percy has always had a soulmate, and so he has never been lonely.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Not everyone has a soulmate. Some do, some do not. Many say that it is a blessing of the gods, marking those chosen for great fates, but more yet say that it is random. So Percy has always believed - his family put little enough stock in such things, not when there are many more practical things to concern themselves with. He has a soulmate, and so do Vesper, and Cassandra, but not the others, and so he, Vesper, and Cassandra have always had to wear gloves, even though the others don’t. It makes little other difference to their lives, beyond that. Vesper’s soulmate is a perfectly suitable young man who will inherit his mother’s estates further along the Sierras, Percy’s and Cassandra’s are yet unidentified, and that is that.  </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That’s why, even when he is a strange, isolated little boy more interested in the rhythm of mathematics and the melody of Celestial, he is never lonely. That is why, even when he is an odd, reclusive young man more interested in his own cleverness and all the things that he can bring out of nothingness into reality, he never feels alone. Percy whiles away long hours in his workshop, humming songs he does not know under his breath, shivering in phantom breezes, growing sleepy with the scent of pine and something that is not warm dog in his nose, and that is enough. Someday, they will meet. Someday, he will come to understand what the stranger whose curious, clever warmth sits easily in the back of his head, behind his ears, means to him and to his life. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He does sometimes wonder what it is that they receive from him. He wonders if they smell forge-smoke the way he sometimes catches the scent of fresh rain, or if they can sometimes taste coffee in the mornings in the same way his tongue sometimes scalds with grease from unseasoned but well-cooked venison in the evenings. Sometimes he feels his own laughter or joy echoing back to him, softer for coming from somewhere other than his own self, and in return finds himself a little nauseous with an anxiety not his own at strange hours of the night. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is a curious thing, something that he finds difficult to explain when Julius or some of the others ask about it, but it is there, and it is his, and he does not question it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr Ripley does, though.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“How </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>curious,” she says, scratching thoughtfully at his hair. He would pull away from her touch if he was not bound tightly to the table, two broad straps each for his arms and legs, another two over belly and chest, and one more across his brow. He’s glad of that one because it stops him from looking down across whatever she’s done to his body. He does not want to have confirmation of all the individual pains. He does not want to see all the parts of himself that feel split open like an overripe orange that’s hit the floor. “There’s someone in there, isn’t there, Percival?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Me,” he gulps out. “</span>
  <em>
    <span>Me.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, dear,” she sighs, taking a gentle hold of his chin that starts pinching, then crushing - she took a knife to his collarbone earlier today, or perhaps yesterday. Today, because it’s still open, and she always makes sure to stitch him up before dumping him aside for the night. Either way, the tighter she holds him, the more it pulls- oh. Because she is tipping his head up, under the strap, and stretching his neck. Why settle for one small torture when you could have two?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, dear,” she sighs again. “That was </span>
  <em>
    <span>most </span>
  </em>
  <span>unhelpful of you, Percival. Let’s try that again, will we? Tell me, boy. Tell me who shares your mind.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Of course she thinks of it as his </span>
  <em>
    <span>mind. </span>
  </em>
  <span>Percy knows well what his mind looks like, and doesn’t think there’s much in it that his partner would wish to share - their warmth is very different to his own, when he musters it. His soul, though? He is a de Rolo, favoured house of the Dawnfather. Surely that means his soul is worth something, and worth sharing in.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me, Percival,” she encourages, something sharp hooking through his lowest left rib. A </span>
  <em>
    <span>false </span>
  </em>
  <span>rib, he remembers, a </span>
  <em>
    <span>floating </span>
  </em>
  <span>rib. He feels untethered as she starts a neat line of long stitches, rib to rib along his flank. She is not pulling the skin taut, still holding his chin, and the pain is otherworldly, even among all the other little tortures she has inflicted upon him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He feels like he might be floating away, into the golden warmth of his soulmate’s panic tucked beneath his ear. He tries to reassure them, as best he can through the agony and the bliss that he thinks might herald his oncoming death, that they will not suffer much longer.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr Ripley relinquishes his jaw, and digs her clever, strong fingertips into the wound on his collarbone. Percy only does not scream because he is barely still joined to his body, aware only of golden terror and flashes of silver light, too close to his face for him to really see anything specific. That is probably for the better. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Tell me, Percival,” she says again. She tugs her curved needle so sharp that his skin curls, the stitches pulling too tight. Percy knows what it must look like, has sewn enough of his own shirts to know what a pulled seam looks like. He should be horrified to think of such a thing, and when he feels the thick thread tear clean through his skin with a </span>
  <em>
    <span>ping-ping-ping</span>
  </em>
  <span> he should feel sick along with it. Still, nothing - he is too far gone. How much has she bled out of him today? How many days has she been doing this? It seems too much, quite suddenly. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His soulmate is holding onto him, somehow. It’s almost as though he can feel their arms around his shoulders, thin and strong, and that’s the last memory he will have of them for the rest of his life.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Dr Ripley’s knife slides silver and bright into the thin skin behind his ear, and the warmth is no more. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Cassandra notices that something is wrong, beyond the wreckage of him and all of their grief, but they do not have time to talk about it before she is bleeding and he is in the river.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Beyond that, for a long time, there is nothing. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The first falling out Percy has with Keyleth is about soulmates, because the world has a plan but it cares not for those who enact it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His time aship was not spent in deep conversation, and even since he joined Vox Machina he has not… Well, perhaps he has been a little reserved about certain things. Even if he had not, soulmates hadn’t been something grand and wondrous to swoon over around the fire while he was growing up. Vesper had her sensible young man from further along the Sierras, Cassandra had her barely-nascent bond, and Percy had someone who smelled of woodsmoke and pine and warmth and who had tried to comfort him, during those last few days before Ripley took them away from him and replaced them with a neat scar behind his ear, invisible silver-white against the pale of his skin. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that was that. He didn’t think much more of soulmates because they are irrelevant to him and have been since before he left Whitestone. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But apparently, they </span>
  <em>
    <span>are </span>
  </em>
  <span>relevant now. His new companions have all kinds of opinions on all kinds of things, and he is supposed to have an opinion on this. He has not been shy about wading into arguments about other things, initially to prove himself clever enough to be of use even outside of combat. They find it odd enough to notice when he withdraws from this disagreement. Why shouldn’t they? They live too crammed together not to notice such things about one another, and even when Percy recuses himself from arguments he makes a point of doing so aloud.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“C’mon, Percy,” Scanlan says, arm out expansively in welcome. Percy has removed himself physically, curling up under a tree hanging over their campsite. Trinket is nearer at hand than anyone else, mostly between him and the others, and he would like to keep it that way. “It’s soulmates! Everyone wants to talk about soulmates!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Scanlan certainly does, but that’s typical of a bard. Soulmates make for a better story, god-given bonds that draw feats of such magnificence and sacrifice from their bearers that tales are told of their works thousands of years later. Some of the stories even say that the gods’ chosen Champions have a soulbond to their patrons - Percy might believe that, if he believed that the gods gave enough of a shit to extend such overt favour. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>From what Percy has overheard, Scanlan’s not given up on meeting his soulmate despite all signs that he perhaps should. </span>
  <em>
    <span>He’s </span>
  </em>
  <span>convinced that it’s Pike - but Pike is always armoured up so much that a first touch is an impossibility. If she wanted to confirm his conviction one way or the other, she would take off a gauntlet, and that she hasn’t speaks volumes, at least to Percy’s mind. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the others, he has carefully not listened to anything they have to say about it all. Pike’s perspective is no doubt guided by whatever Sarenrae’s edicts on such things are, and Grog’s thoughts will be the usual hodgepodge of directness tempered by Pike’s softer heart. Tiberius will have some kind of complicated and high-minded conception that Percy will understand but not necessarily like. The twins-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He never knows what to expect with the twins. Not quite yet. Whenever he thinks he has a handle on them, they slip through his fingers like shadows. Even with how close he watches Vex’ahlia.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Come on, Percival,” Vax calls, beckoning with a careless gesture over his shoulder. “You must be freezing over there. Come on and get warm.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s not even snowing,” he says, mild as he can muster. The scar behind his ear pulses like a living thing, and he hates it. He hates it usually, for being the only one of his scars that can’t be hidden under his clothes, but he hates it more than anything in the world just then, because he’s sickly sure that some of them have already noticed it and absolutely certain that someone, probably Vax, will bring it up. “But alright, if it makes you all feel better.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He sits between Keyleth and Vex, not objecting when Keyleth huddles against his arm. He isn’t surprised that she’s cold, in her sleeveless robe, and turns out his arm a little so that she can loop her arms around his elbow. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So Scanlan has a soulmate,” Keyleth says, with the swooping high-low of drunkenness in her voice. “And I’m probably gonna have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>bunch, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and Tiberius says that he’s got like, three-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s different!” Tiberius butts in, but Keyleth waves him off. That alone is out of character enough for her that Percy should have been on his guard, but he is fond of Keyleth and never thinks to be as wary with her as he is with others. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Pike’s got one too, and Grog says goliaths </span>
  <em>
    <span>don’t, </span>
  </em>
  <span>not the way we do, and I figure that the twins are each other’s - don’t make those faces! It’s not </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>romantic, you guys!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins, in perfect unison, have turned over their shoulders to retch. Percy is inclined to agree, because aside from divine bonds he’s only heard of a </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>occasional example of any sort of platonic bond. Perhaps people don’t talk about them, unless they’re a grand, dramatic romance, but even the twins’ unusual closeness does not seem exceptional, when Percy remembers other twins he has known.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“And you had one, right? Before this?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her fingers brush the scar behind his ear and he jumps as though lightning-struck. He’s on his feet and standing outside the circle of them, hand covering the side of his neck, before any of them really seem to have comprehended what it is Keyleth </span>
  <em>
    <span>said. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’ll take first watch,” he says, wishing his voice wasn’t so strangled. Is he flushed? He feels scarlet in the face. “I’m going to patrol-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It’s no big deal, Percy,” Grog says, waving his tankard. “So what if you don’t have one? I don’t have one.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Scanlan’s smile hasn’t disappeared but it has tilted, going sideways as it only really does when something goes wrong in a fight or a con. Pike looks concerned, haloed by moonlight, and that’s far worse than unshakeable Scanlan seeming shaken, because Pike is more likely to act on it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The twins are watching him with furrowed brows. Vax looks wary, as if waiting for him to react. Vex looks worried, and that is worst of all.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keyleth looks confused.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you decided to sever your bond, Percy-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Whether I decided or not is not the point, Keyleth,” he snaps. “Don’t you think I would have volunteered my- my </span>
  <em>
    <span>status, </span>
  </em>
  <span>as everyone else did, had I wanted to share?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s very quiet. Even Tiberius seems startled by this, and by his reaction.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Percival,” Vax says, slow and cautious, the same voice he uses on undecided enemies. “Whatever you think Keyleth has done-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He quiets when Vex knocks her shoulder against his. She, at least, has turned to look at the others, and one by one they stop staring at Percy. Vex doesn’t put her foot down often, but she’s the one most likely to be listened to when she does - probably because she does it so rarely. They defer to her when she insists on it, and Percy is ashamed to be glad that she is insisting on it for his sake. He should have better control than to need such protection. Were this a gathering in Whitestone, and someone behaved so inappropriately, the onus would have been on him to </span>
  <em>
    <span>not </span>
  </em>
  <span>react, and to handle it discreetly. That he has caused such upheaval is one more failing on his part to compound his many other sins. That Vex so quickly diffused it is another virtue to add to her list.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m going to walk the perimeter,” he says, pushing down the anger that’s bubbling up his gullet, sour with embarrassment. “Excuse me, please.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keyleth follows him, because of course she does. He wishes very much that she wouldn’t, because he is angry with her but does not want to take it out on her. It is not her fault that this was done to him. It is not her fault that he was old enough to remember, before the bond was severed - he knew stories of families who did that to their children as soon as the bond made itself known, to prevent any trouble with marital arrangements going forward, but his parents had never considered such a thing because he had not found his bond partner. Had he found them, and had they come from an unsuitable family, perhaps then the discussion would have been had, but the Briarwoods took his parents and Ripley took his soulmate, so the point is moot.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keyleth was not to know that he did not have his bond severed by choice. Keyleth does not deserve anger and disgust that should be reserved for Anna Ripley. Keyleth is also </span>
  <em>
    <span>supposed </span>
  </em>
  <span>to be a diplomat, and sensitive to the sensitivities of others, and should never have mentioned that particular scar unless he raised the issue first.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Percy! Percy, darling, come back-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Oh. That is not Keyleth. He stops, just beyond the treeline, to allow Vex’ahlia to catch him up.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I’m sorry, Percy,” she says quietly. “It’s no excuse, but she’s drunk and she meant no harm. I get the impression that things are </span>
  <em>
    <span>quite </span>
  </em>
  <span>different for the Ashari, and for her specifically, with her… everything.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“She knows well enough how it is for humans that she </span>
  <em>
    <span>shouldn’t </span>
  </em>
  <span>have said anything,” he says, hands clenched hard at his sides. “And she knows </span>
  <em>
    <span>me </span>
  </em>
  <span>well enough, too. Drunkenness is no excuse, as you say.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They stand there, in quiet and dusk, for a long moment. Percy has spent hours in Vex’s silence by now, sitting back and calmly working to clear the field from a distance while the others put themselves more directly in harm’s way, and this is familiar enough to calm him. Or, maybe it’s just her.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mine’s broken too,” Vex says, fingertips a featherlight pressure on his elbow through her gloves and his coat. Her grip is powerful, but precise - always just enough pressure. Her extreme control is something he hugely admires. That, in its way, is calming as well. “Years ago, it just… disappeared. I think they’re dead. I understand a little, at least.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Mine was cut,” he says. “It was one of the worst days of my life.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He very carefully has not told them anything of Whitestone, of strange dreams and terrible nightmares. He hadn’t meant to admit even this much, although he knows he gave himself away with how badly he reacted to Keyleth’s revelation. It is only the knowledge that Vex can hold her tongue that allowed him to say even that much.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vex’s hand wraps fully around his elbow in the darkness, and he feels a little less alone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“It was Ripley, wasn’t it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cassandra does not touch him, and he’s glad of it. They were not much given to physical affection as a family, and while they have shared embraces a time or two since their reunion, it is easier to sink back into familiarity than to attempt to shift into some new reality. Instead, she comes to lean against the balustrade with him, propping her backside against the lip of the stone so that they’re facing opposite ways. To anyone else, it looks as though they’re having a serious, face-to-face conversation, but they have not quite learned to look one another in the eye again. Percy can’t help but stare at the purple-white scar beneath her collarbone, and he knows that she’s staring at his hair.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They all inherited premature greying from their mother, finding their first grey hairs when they were just twelve or thirteen to a one. Cassandra’s even looks like Lady Johanna’s had, when they were children, the heavy streaks of smokey grey-white stark against the dark brown. Percy’s looks just as unnatural as it is. He has become as used to it as he is ever likely to.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Probably,” he says. “What specifically do you mean, though?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She tips up her chin - the same as his own, a little square, a little severe - and gestures to his left ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Ah.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Quite.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He has not checked Cassandra’s neck for a mark to match his own, not because he does not care but because he hopes that she has been spared this last pain, if nothing else, and is afraid to confirm one way or the other. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was the same day you found me,” he admits. “I was so far gone I hardly felt it.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“De- Lady Briarwood would not let her have me as she had you,” Cassandra says quietly. “I was more use, ah, </span>
  <em>
    <span>whole. </span>
  </em>
  <span>I think they hoped to install me as an official figurehead, if- if construction took much longer. They were bonded. Sy- Lord and Lady Briarwood. Even with his being… as he was. It continued into undeath, which I found interesting.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That is interesting. It is not what she wants to ask, though. He keeps quiet, not even commenting on the fact that her first instinct is to call the Briarwoods by their names. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“They protected me from that,” she says, uncertain and young. Which she </span>
  <em>
    <span>is. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She is! She is so very young, and Percy wishes bitterly that he might have done more to protect her from everything she has braved all these years. “They had me meet a few potential partners they deemed suitable, but no one so far. I wonder that they allowed her to do that to you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I don’t think they </span>
  <em>
    <span>allowed </span>
  </em>
  <span>her to do anything to me, particularly,” he says, leaning a little closer, speaking only as loud as he absolutely must for her to hear. “She was rather a law unto herself. There was no real benefit to any of what she did.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“So why…?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Because I wouldn’t admit to it, I suppose,” he guesses. “And she loves nothing quite so much as she does proving others wrong, unless it’s indulging her own worst impulses.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cassandra’s hand is warm on his, bare skin to bare skin. Percy is not particularly precious of avoiding hand-to-hand contact the way some people are, certain as he is that he does not need to worry about the unexpected connection of a soulbond, but he’s used to travelling with Vox Machina, who </span>
  <em>
    <span>are. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He cannot remember when last he felt another person’s fingers against his own without leather to dull their warmth. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“It was cruel,” she says. “For no purpose but to hurt you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Percy laughs, a sharp bark that raises a pale cloud in the air before him, and then looks Cassandra in the eye.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Everyone but you was dead by the time she put me on that table,” he says, turning his hand to squeeze her fingers. “Everything she did served no purpose but to hurt me, Cass.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s a true, aching joy to have her here at all, and knowing that she understands makes it easier to speak about… About any of this. The smooth formality of this is even easier to work with than Vex’s quietude, because this is more than just familiar - this is bone-deep, trained into him from before he could talk, and practiced </span>
  <em>
    <span>with </span>
  </em>
  <span>Cassandra until they were forced away from it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But tomorrow is Winter’s Crest, and it will do no one any good to dwell on such dark things. He wonders, for a moment, if this is too personal to ask, but given everything-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“What’s yours like?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Cassandra pauses, and he lets her think. It’s nice here, in the chill and the quiet and the dusting snowfall. It feels almost like it used to. If he didn’t know better, he’d half expect Vesper and Julius to come up the steps behind them to scold them down inside for dinner, unaware that Ludwig and Oliver were hiding in the shadows just along the wall, snowballs at the ready. Poor Whitney was still sitting before their mother’s dressing mirror, Mother battling her too-thick hair into an elegant twist, and Father was expounding the virtues of active, clever children to whatever guests they were rudely ignoring-</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>We didn’t touch in my family. </span>
  </em>
  <span>No, they did not. But they were happy. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Quiet, mostly,” Cass says, sounding thoughtful, and a little longing. “I think they’re seafaring, maybe? But I think they don’t really know what to make of me. I can’t blame them - I don’t really know what to make of me, at the moment.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps it will do them no harm to be a </span>
  <em>
    <span>little </span>
  </em>
  <span>more affectionate.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>No one says another word about soulmates in Percy’s hearing for a long time after that, until they are in a cold tomb below a lake, and Vex’ahlia cups her hand to her neck below her right ear and says, sounding faraway, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Oh, </span>
  </em>
  <span>brother! They- they’re not dead!”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She is alive. She is </span>
  <em>
    <span>alive. </span>
  </em>
  <span>She is alive, and the soulmate she thought lost is once more alive, </span>
  <em>
    <span>just like Vex is. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He feels a relief he doesn’t deserve at that. He might have killed her, but at least Kashaw and Zahra and Vax’ildan have restored to her a soulmate who might, hopefully, be worth her time. For some strange reason, knowing that she is back on the road toward finding her true partner leaves him feeling freer to love her, even with her blood on his hands.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She is weak, wobbling a little even with Trinket and Zahra’s support. Her face is sallow, her quick, busy hands limp, her light step heavy - but she is alive. Percy’s already damned and so he will absorb all the blame, all the ill luck bound for whatever force would take one such as Vex’ahlia from the world before her time, but she is alive, and he is so relieved that he can barely look at her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>The joy that takes him when she kisses his cheek, twirling the siege arrow between her fingers not because it’s safe but because she trusts, somehow, that he would do her no harm - it leaves him a little knock-kneed. She gives him a smile as she withdraws, and if there’s a strange, curious edge to it that he’s never seen before - it’s probably his imagination.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that’s it, really, for a time.  </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Vex is not the sort of woman to share herself freely with others, not in any way that could bring her lasting harm. He admired it about her very much when he first began to travel with them, how carefully she dances the line between making everyone think they see through her and keeping absolutely everything tucked away inside. She offers up a mirror, throwing down laughter and flirtation and- well, the </span>
  <em>
    <span>appearance of openness. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Percy can emulate certain of her tactics, but not that one. To reveal his body as she does hers, well, it would only invite more questions, even now that they know the outline of his truth. </span>
  <em>
    <span>She’s</span>
  </em>
  <span> never been shy of sharing her body - Percy can still remember the first time he’d seen her tight, lean back and shoulders, lit by dancing firelight as she sauntered through their streamside camp from the water’s edge to her pack, stripped above the waist but for her breastband and her bow looped over her body. She’d been cut during their fight earlier in the day, and had stripped off her shirt to rinse the blood out in the cool stream before attempting to sew it. Percy had tried not to watch her move, tried not to stare, but the firelight had turned her all to gold and dark angles, and, well, Vex’ahlia is beautiful, and Percy hadn’t exactly seen many women so scantily clad by that point. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Best not to think of that now. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But she is a private person, despite how carefully she presents herself as an open book. She does not talk about the return of her soulmate around the fire or over dinner, not even when Scanlan reliably guides their chatter there, not even when Keyleth tries to goad her into it. She’s as lightfooted in conversation as she is in the underbrush of the forests she loves so well, and dodges everyone’s attempts. Perhaps she’s talked to Vax about it, but Percy doubts it, not with how Vax has been behaving since she died and returned.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>They’re too busy, is the long and the short of it, and he, as confirmed by the goddess of </span>
  <em>
    <span>fate, </span>
  </em>
  <span>is too broken to worry about it any more. So they hunt for Vestiges and plan to kill dragons - and kill one! They manage to bring down Umbrasyl and free Westruun, and then, in Scanlan’s mansion, in the Feywild, Vex reveals that she thinks she is </span>
  <em>
    <span>not good enough. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The very idea is ludicrous, of course. Percy truthfully cannot think of anyone he would hold in higher regard than her, even if he was not utterly in love with her. In Syngorn, in the suffocating company of her fool father, she allows herself to be diminished. Percy can no more allow her to be swallowed by Syldor’s shadow than she allowed Orthax to consume him.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Even if his neck burns with everyone’s knowing looks. Even Grog looks at him sidelong when he hands the scroll back to Syldor with every ounce of pompous, disdainful arrogance he can summon. It is nothing to ennoble her. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It is</span>
  <em>
    <span> everything</span>
  </em>
  <span> to have her overjoyed at him tying her to Whitestone.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He is so proud he nearly cheers, when she denies Saundor. How lucky her soulmate is, to have </span>
  <em>
    <span>her. </span>
  </em>
  <span>He hopes they understand how unbelievably generous fate has been, to tie her thread together with theirs.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Percy decides, on the path to Glintshore, that if he is ever to atone for Anna Ripley’s sins, then he must lay his own to rest. He has been stewing on this for a long while, since Vex resolutely refused to allow him to take any true, meaningful blame for her death. If she can forgive that, what excuse has he to hold onto his hatred even beyond death? The Briarwoods are gone. By the time this is done, either Ripley will join them or he will. Either way, his part in it is at an end.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He tells the twins, barefaced, that he loves them. Vax understands it, but Vex and all her doubt does not, and Percy is a little glad of it. He could not bear to leave her thinking she owes him a debt, because even greedy, lovely Vex’ahlia should never have to estimate the price of a heart freely given, unrequited.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He writes a letter. In it, he gives Vex’ahlia the highest compliment he can, and hopes that she understands. That even if she is not for him, they are made of the same stuff, and in a kinder world, a world where he was not corrupted and tainted, he might have given himself to her openly, and been accepted gladly.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He loves them all so very much, for the family they have given him and for their fierce determination to correct his mistakes. Whitestone will be safe with them. </span>
  <em>
    <span>Cassandra </span>
  </em>
  <span>will be safe with them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He forgives Ripley as he cannot quite forgive himself. He brushes his fingertips over the neat scar behind his ear as he falls.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Percival Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III knows no more.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>… there is pain. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Percy, thanks to Dr Ripley, thinks very little of pain.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>… Orthax is </span>
  <em>
    <span>very </span>
  </em>
  <span>angry.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>So is Percy. It’s all so very </span>
  <em>
    <span>inconvenient. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>… </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>…  Keyleth’s bracelets jangle even in the void of death. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <br/>
  <br/>
</p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>… a part of the thing you hold dearest…</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vex’ahlia is too clever to think that he prizes Whitestone above her, surely? They are two prizes to which he has no claim. Two impossible dreams he does not deserve. In tying her to Whitestone, he was simply trying to keep her in his life when she finds her soulmate. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Whitestone is his legacy. His home. A home is not a home without love, and Percy’s heart is wherever Vex is. She would have wandered forever, had he not given her a home. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>One is nothing without the other. He ought to let her know. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He turns his head toward the sound of her voice. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>… Pike’s hands are so small and warm without her gauntlets. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Percy turns his face into her touch, or tries to.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>…</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>… </span>
  <em>
    <span>my best friend… </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Keyleth, again. If he cannot reach them, he hopes that she and Cassandra turn to one another.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>For now, though, he will turn toward her. It is the best he can do.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Percy wakes with Vax’s hands on him, and Keyleth’s, and Pike’s, and Scanlan’s. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He catches that last, and returns it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Then there is Cassandra, looking so much like their mother that it is very nearly too much for his poor, death-addled mind, her hands strong and firm as they smooth tangles from his hair like Whitney used, when Vesper scolded him for being untidy. Had he his wits a little more about him, he might laugh, or cry. Either way.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Memory fades, as it is wont to do, and mostly he just remembers the golden-green of Keyleth’s hand in the darkness, reminding him that there was something waiting for him beyond Orthax’s terrible anger. Perhaps that is for the best.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Grog’s hands are next, heaving him upright with strength and gentleness in not-quite equal measure. Then Keyleth’s again, healing him enough that he can make the interminable walk up to the castle. Vax’s again, when he stumbles, and he realises suddenly how wretched his poor clothes must be that he can feel their bare hands on his bare skin, over and over again.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Gilmore, in the castle, in relief and comfort and a little in warning. Jarret, in greeting. Cass again, later, smoothing through his hair and down the back of his neck long enough that he sort-of stirs, and knows her by her perfume, by the absence of burnt black powder underlying the scent. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>At some point, someone tucked a blanket around him. He does not remember who it was, but assumes it must have been Cassandra. </span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>His dreams are sublime. He does not think he’s ever known elation like it, except on his knees in a cold tomb, watching Vex’s chest rise after it had stilled.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He wakes up. He touches the scar behind his ear, and he smiles.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <em>
    <span>Welcome back, </span>
  </em>
  <span>he thinks toward them - matching their joy with his own, sinking into that once-familiar golden warmth before, once more, sinking into sleep.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Percy still aches as he follows a skittish Vex into the library, and makes a note to settle her just as soon as he finds the bestiary he thinks they need. It shouldn’t take much - if her nervousness is anything like his own was, then just seeing him breathing and well ought to do a great deal. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>How wonderful it is to worry for her. How glorious it is to look up from a useless book and see her discarding tome after tome, sunlight showing up threads of gold in her thick, dark hair. He has never been so weary in his entire life, but he has never been so happy, either. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Is it selfish? To be happy while the world is collapsing around them? Probably it is, but he is happily alive, and happily lovesick, and his soulmate is happily returned to him out of the shadow of death and they are giddy in their little space, tucked behind his left ear. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He manages to tear his gaze away from Vex’s throat, more exposed than usual by the absence of armour and gear, and turns a page, and says, </span>
  <em>
    <span>“Huh.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Did you find it?”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He did not hear her coming, but he’s so used to that by now that he never jumps. If he’s downwind of her, he’ll usually catch a whiff of her perfume, light and sweet and always with a hint of warm bear. She’s braced one arm on the back of his chair, the other on the table before him, and this close, she is </span>
  <em>
    <span>stunning</span>
  </em>
  <span> in every sense. He feels electrified by her nearness in a way he has not in some time, since he trained himself not to react to her so obviously, and smiles like a fool.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well,” he sighs, tearing his gaze away from her face. “That’s intimidating.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“That’s enormous,” Vex agrees, and whatever clever little quip Percy had planned disappears on the tip of his tongue when their hands, tracing the goristro’s shape in the book, touch. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He dressed this morning from the wardrobe Cass has arranged for him, to keep Lord de Rolo in suitable fashion. New everything, save his boots, but no guns or gloves - his guns are in need of repair, even if the thought of walking Castle Whitestone fully armed was not repugnant. So, fawn breeches and crisply white shirt and a waistcoat in what Cassandra promised him is a fashionable pattern. But no gloves, not even the silk or cotton that it is usual for people of their station with soulmates to wear, and so it is that he learns that Vex’ahlia’s hands are cool, that her is touch gentle, and that she is his soulmate.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>If he was electrified before, this must be an entire thunderstorm pouring into him. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The noise that Vex makes - frantic, a panicky, choked laugh that goes a little keening at the end - will stay with him as clearly as the phantom sense of her arms around his shoulders did, on Ripley’s table. There are songs written about the first touch of hand-on-hand, between soulmates. Scanlan likes to sing them, sometimes, and they are inescapable in taverns of a certain calibre and side-business. They speak of lust and fate and are always grand, sweeping things. Right now, Percy feels as greedy as they always tease Vex for being, because all he can think is that he wants more of her touch, as much as she is willing to give.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Oh, darling,” she says, voice high and breathless and windswept, somehow, and she is </span>
  <em>
    <span>glowing </span>
  </em>
  <span>when she shifts to face him properly, cheeks and ears and nose pinked as if by the cold. He could stare at her forever. With the way her joy echoes back to his, bouncing between their souls, she might even allow it.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He leans up. He takes her lovely, beloved face in his hands, stroking the flush of her cheeks with his thumbs as he has wished to a thousand times before. Something in him sings when she mirrors him, her narrow hands cupping his jaw </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And he kisses her.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>He intends on kissing her, and withdrawing - there is still so much to talk about, and he is still weary and sore and is sure that his skin smells cold. He does not think that he can do justice to much beyond just a kiss.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vex disagrees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Her hands lift into his hair as soon as their lips touch, steadying him against the blaze of their bond recognized tearing like sunshine through his mind. He feels lightheaded in the best possible way, letting her drag his mouth open with his lower lip between her teeth so that her tongue can slide along his. He thinks he’s made a noise, drowned somewhere in the moan Vex shivers into his mouth, and someone will probably overhear them. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He drops his hands to fit around her waist when her knee slides alongside his thigh, guiding her into his lap. He’s enough taller than her that usually, he has to bend so she can kiss his cheek, but like this, with her kneeling over him so she can kiss into his mouth like she’s chasing proof of life, he is hers to command.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He laughs into her mouth. As though he is not </span>
  <em>
    <span>always </span>
  </em>
  <span>hers. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>His hands and hers both are roving, his busy learning the shallow curves and dips of her hips and back and hers making a study of his shoulders and his arms, hot even through his shirt. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I want to feel your hands on me, Percival,” she says, breathless and low against his mouth. “Put your hands on me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>He kisses her again, starved of her in a single moment apart, and tugs her tunic from her trousers so he can find the warm, much-scarred skin of her back. He finds those same shallow curves without the linen in the way, finds scars both grievous and glancing, and she sighs, setting to rapid work on his necktie and his waistcoat. Even through his shirt, her hands burn, and he is sure that the sound he makes will get them arrested when she gives up on unbuttoning him and seizes two handfuls of shirtfront and </span>
  <em>
    <span>heaves. </span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Well!” he manages, as his buttons bounce away across the table and the floor and tinkle against the window, and she laughs like the wind before diving in to kiss him some more. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And that is how Keyleth and Vax find them, when they come looking for them, Vex’s tunic over her head and caught awkwardly on her elbows and Percy with one arm out of his shirt and waistcoat. They got no further, because taking their hands off one another is almost painful. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Interesting,” Vax says, cool as the grave. “Didn’t think they kept the bestiaries down Freddie’s trousers, sister.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vex, to her credit, maintains her composure. Percy does not know how she does it, because he has dissolved into giggles at the flaming scarlet of Keyleth’s face, and he can feel the bubbling-over amusement she is keeping entirely hidden spilling like gold coins into his own mind.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Surprise!” Vex says dryly. “I </span>
  <em>
    <span>told </span>
  </em>
  <span>you he was back!”</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>They steal a moment in the forests of Draconia while Keyleth restores all that Vorugal has taken from the Ravenites. Victory has never tasted quite so sweet as it does on Vex’ahlia’s lips.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She speaks of forgiveness, as though she could ever need such a thing. Percy thinks, maybe, that he might seek it in the light of her grace.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“She’s too good for you, you know. And not because of that title you gave her.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“I am the last person who needs to be told </span>
  <em>
    <span>that.”</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vax is visible only as an outline of starlight in the deepest shadows of Percy’s bedchamber. His face is so similar to Vex’s, but Percy has never had any real trouble in telling them apart the way everyone else insists is the standard. Perhaps that should have tipped him off.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“If you hurt her any more than you already have-”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You won’t have a chance to kill me.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vax nods, once and with grave finality, and Percy shoulders his bag of quietly clinking bottles. He and Vex need to have a </span>
  <em>
    <span>talk, </span>
  </em>
  <span>and he’ll need all the Courage he can muster.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>She dies again in Thordak’s lair, to Raishan’s hatred, and the whole of existence is leached of colour. He can’t get his hands on her for entire minutes after Pike raises her, but she flees into his arms as soon as they have a moment to catch their breath, pressing their faces into each others’ shoulders, sliding filthy hands under one another’s filthy clothes and armour to splay spread-fingered across their backs. A moment is all it takes to settle them, both whispering desperate apologies into each other’s ears, her for dying and him for not preventing it, and then she begins to laugh, and so does he, and even Raishan’s disappearance cannot take this rapid relief from them.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Across the way are Vax and Keyleth, moving in strange harmonious tandem even a hundred yards apart from one another. There is Grog, already sorting through the impossible wealth Thordak stole from Emon. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And there is Scanlan, still halfway frozen and only now returning under the touch of Pike’s softly glowing hands. Pike’s softly glowing </span>
  <em>
    <span>bare</span>
  </em>
  <span> hands.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Percy dies again, to Raishan’s claws and teeth, gone so briefly that the echo of Vex’s scream at discovering has not quite faded. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Scanlan dies too. They bring him back, and that is not enough. Not even Pike’s stunned tears at his apparent rejection of their bond are enough.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That night, curled together in the cool air of their room, windows thrown open to cast moonshine and goosepimples across their skin, Vex sighs against his throat.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“You were cruel,” she says. “I’d forgotten, I suppose, that you have that in you.”</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Percy never forgets it. He just keeps it carefully rationed, doling it out as circumstance and furious temper requires.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Never with you,” he promises, and she settles easily on top of him, soft and heavy and, soon, asleep. Her trust in him is humbling, and he wishes very much to be worthy of it. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps being less cruel is a good place to start. Perhaps the cruelty belongs in the past, alongside the hunger for vengeance, and the hatred. For his own sake, he will never change, but for Vex, for Whitestone, for the legacy his family deserves?</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Perhaps. It will be the work of a lifetime to change himself, he knows. To become less like Ripley and more the man his parents tried to raise.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Vex shivers against him, and he reaches out, drags a blanket across them both. Warm atop him, warm in his heart and his head - well. Even if it is the work of a lifetime, at least he will never be lonely.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
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